Overview

This document describes an unsupported workaround that is not guaranteed to work in the future.

After these steps are performed on a server, it is the system administrator's responsibility to manage and maintain the server's database software.

We recommend that only experienced system administrators attempt to perform these steps.

We are not responsible for any data loss that is caused by an attempt to perform these steps.

This guide provides the steps to reduce the file size of the log files on your server that you do not manage through WHM'scPanel Log Rotation Configuration interface (WHM >> Home >> Service Configuration >> cPanel Log Rotation Configuration).

Check disk space usage and compress old log files

cPanel & WHM creates and maintains log files. These log files allow you to examine errors and other occurrences on the system.

After an extended period of time, the log files grow to significant sizes on the system's storage devices. cPanel & WHM archives log files with the cpanellogd daemon. However, this daemon does not archive all log files. To reduce the amount of disk space that the log files occupy, you should compress these log files.

Delete log files in cPanel

Check the disk space from the command line

Before you begin, ensure that you are logged in to the terminal as the root user.

Use the du command to see which files and directories consume the most space inside of the /var/log directory.

du -h /var/log/

The du command prints the estimated disk space usage of each file and directory for the path that you specified.

The -h argument causes the command to print the information in a human-readable format. When you issue the command in the above example, the du utility prints the estimated disk space of each file and directory that the /var/log directory path contains.

The numbers in the left column of the output represent the file size of each file and directory that the specified directory path contains, in human-readable format.

It is possible that you may see more output from the utility than the example shows. Due to the size of the files and directories in the /var/log directory path, the du utility may require some time to produce an output.

Select the files or directories that you want to clear

You can clear individual files within a directory.

Example

Example

The /var/log/munin directory uses 2.6 G of space, and is the second largest log on the list.

Use the cd command to move the prompt to the /var/log/munin/ directory. Then, use the du -h * command to see the file sizes.

Log rotation

cPanel & WHM's log rotation system compresses and stores old log files in /usr/local/cpanel/logs/archive/ directory. These actions also help you manage and reduce the amount of disk space that your hard drive uses.

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